181–190 of 257 posts
I like the idea that changing the display color was a must-have feature for the initial release. Shows a very solid understanding of the target demographic's user needs. (My 3yo loves any toy that includes a color picker!)
(Imagine my irrational excitement when I surpassed 250 karma here on HN)
This is absolutely adorable, hilarious and understandable at the same time.
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I suggest adjusting your gradient so they don't fully fade out until just before the sweep hits them, or maybe even only down to 10%, so they only get wiped by the bar. It'll make it much easier to watch a plane if it doesn't keep disappearing entirely.
On the other hand, if you want maximum realism, everything should fade continuously from when it is drawn. The underlying technology being imitated here is a slowly decaying phosphor.
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Just a few weeks ago I got interested in this as well ("where does FR24 get its data from?"). I ended up buying a cheap RTL-SDR dongle (R820T2) and a small outdoor antenna. I run the free dump1090 tool (I'm on Fedora) to decode ADS-B messages, then my own simple "radar-like" visualization program ([1]) connects to dump1090's network socket to receive decoded data (SBS1 textual format). Even with the antenna just sitt…
I see your use of rust, and I have to mention I designed a Rust ADS-B decoder and TUI radar application myself ([1]) [1] https://github.com/rsadsb/adsb_deku/
Advice for a wholesome activity with your daughter: Bring her to the closest road/parking lot/park at the inbound end of your closest international airport runway (Typically this changes based on wind direction). Park and watch the planes come in and land. She can use her "radar" to see which planes are coming in (we used flightradar24). My kids were FLOORED how close the planes get to the ground on approach - especi…
> Only multi-engine, fixed-wing aircraft up to Airbus A318 size with special aircraft and aircrew certification to fly 5.5° approaches are allowed to conduct operations at London City Airport.
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I believe they still do after and possibly before the flight. They used to do it during the flight!
I've done that! It was on what I think was my first commercial flight, a 767 from probably YVR to LAX sometime in the early 80s. My grandfather was the king of getting kids into fun places, he would go talk up the crew (of the plane, ferry, train, whatever), then come back and fetch whichever grandkids he had. Sadly those days are long gone now.
This was in the mid 1990s, and the cabin crew invited me to look. I don't think there were many children on the plane.
Nice work and nice writeup. It's interesting to me how strongly the design of original radar displays anchors the project. Your toddler might never interact with a real CRT, much less an ASR-9 with a PPI display. But you've gone to great lengths to simulate one for her. Partly because of your affinity for skeumorphism, as you said, but it may also be because the OG radar display is a fantastic distillation of "Is the…
I think I was very well served by having a very pure motive: What direction should I look to find a plane, and worked up from there.